Inspiration: Englishman River Falls

I made two sketching trips to Englishman River Falls; the first in 1994 with my friend and fellow sketcher, and the second a couple of years later when I drove over to Vancouver Island by myself, camped at the Falls and sketched my heart out.

I have very few photos considering this is a major inspiration of mine – I have picked a few that appear to be in the general vicinity from old photo albums. Non are labelled so I’m not exactly sure whether they are Englishman Falls or not, but at least they give an idea of the area.

Teal waters from my ’94 Island sketching trip. This postcard from Tourism Nanaimo was picked up on my ’94 Island sketching trip and shows me why I didn’t take a lot of photos – the area was deep in the forest and very dark. This, I seem to remember, is one of the smaller waterfalls in the park on the way to the main falls. The description on the back says only : ‘Enjoy the varied natural surroundings in one of Nanaimo’s 28 urban parks and natural areas.’A photo from a later trip. Again, I’m not certain if this is Englishman Falls, but it certainly shows the dark jagged rocks that inspired my initial drawings.Englishman Falls, acrylic over textured gesso with ink brush strokes delineating the rushing water. From my 9×6 sketch book: a pencil sketch of Englishman Falls in preparation for make etching prints.

An ink sketch of Englishman Falls from the same sketch book.

A lithograph in brown ink made from drawing and scratching on a stone plate with various materials.Also from my 9×6 sketch book: a sketch of Englishman Falls with notes on colour; mostly blue-green and blue-green-black. And another from my 9×6 sketch book: a watercolour of Englishmans Falls with potential sound effect notes: ‘birds tapping, sapsuckers? spinning?’ to which I reply, ‘wrong motion, rocking more, blur, hurdy-gurdy!’ then, ‘different sounds – how?’, ‘uneven spacing will give different sounds, click, click.’ I was also thinking of some sort of ‘light’ show with the notes: ‘slots of light’ and ‘transparent light images, Thailand’.Polaroid of my first attempt at an acrylic painting of Englishman Falls. I was never happy with it and eventually decided that the problem was that its four foot height was too small to really convey the majesty of these rocks and consequentially painted over it.Small acrylic painting of Englishman Falls.The section of the river leading to the falls was quite different; the water was tobacco brown and filled with intriguing boulders.This is the area where the brown water flows into the deep pools and turns that rich blue-green I associate with the falls. More of Nancy Merrill’s Photo a Week Challenge: Water.

4 responses to “Inspiration: Englishman River Falls”

I love the way you have translated the falls in pencil drawings and then into the sketch book painting. It’s great to see your process and the way the drawings were realised into the small acrylic painting.